The flu that wasn't? Yet..

The swine flu/bird flu/H1N1 sickness is causing panic and fear--panic and fear with hardly any deaths! Though the WHO and US Health officials are warning that the mutation is upon us and the flu will cause a mass pandemic this fall, signs of that happening are few and far between. There are signs of mass vaccination programs, however.. This week the government started looking for a few good arms to test the vaccination.. One school had hundreds of calls come in to volunteer the vaccine test.. Up to 12,000 kids across the nation will also test the vaccine for its effectiveness, and danger..

Europe is driving an effort to fast track the flu vaccine before winter.. According to the AP, the European Medicines Agency, the EU's top drug regulatory body, is accelerating the approval process for swine flu vaccine, and countries such as Britain, Greece, France and Sweden say they'll start using the vaccine after it's greenlighted — possibly within weeks..

Fast-tracked..? What about the dangers of rushing through the speedy process without proper testing?

# # #

2009 and 1976? In 2002, the Washington POST detailed the story of the 1976 swine flu, the government's fears, and the attempt to vaccinate the entire country against it. According to the POST's reporting, pharmaceutical rushed a fast track program to get drugs and vaccines to the public by the fall of 1976.

President Gerald Ford ordered that the public receive the flu shots .. Three elderly Pittsburgh natives died within hours of getting the swine flu vaccine// and in December of that year, Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare, usually reversible but occasionally fatal form of paralysis, was found in 1 in 1,000 people that got the fast tracked shot.

CBS 60 MINUTES had a special on the swine flu in 1979..

# # #

SWINE FLU MEMORIES
How did we get here..? In 1918 a massive flu struck the United States that resulted in 50 to 100 million deaths around the planet.. As just mentioned, government public service ads and Presidential orders told the public to get the swine flu vaccine in 1976, though there was no real fear of the flu actually breaking out.